GREELEY, Colo.—The seizure of illegal immigrants’ tax returns by Weld County authorities violated people’s privacy and could undermine confidence in the tax system, the American Civil Liberties Union said Monday.
The arguments came during the first day of an ACLU lawsuit against the Weld County district attorney’s office and the sheriff’s office, which seized thousands of documents from a tax preparer’s business in an identity theft investigation.
The files have caused Amalia Cerrillo’s clients to be arrested “and her to be viewed as the typhoid Mary of the immigrant community,” ACLU attorney Reid Neureiter said in his opening arguments in a Weld County courtroom.
District Attorney Ken Buck has said as many as 1,300 illegal immigrants were breaking the law by filing taxes using false or stolen identities.
But the ACLU says the tax records are confidential and authorities had no right to seize them from Amalia’s Translation and Tax Services in Greeley. The ACLU is demanding that authorities return or destroy the tax files taken from the business.
Cerrillo, who has not been charged with a crime, testified about the toll the investigation has had on her and her business.
“Emotionally, it’s been hard because I’ve had clients that have been with me for 10 years, and they’ve been arrested, deported, or are in jail,” she said as she began to cry.
Cerrillo also said her business has declined because people no longer trust her.
Tom Lyons, an attorney for the Weld County sheriff’s office, said the records were not confidential because they were never in the possession of the IRS.
The ACLU’s lawsuit is not the first time the confidentiality of the records has come into question. On Dec. 9, Weld County District Judge James Hartmann Jr. ruled that no more arrest warrants could be issued if they were based on information from federal tax returns.
On Monday, Hartmann issued another ruling on a claim by a defendant in the identity theft probe who said his tax records were illegally seized. The 30-page decision said the search warrant executed by county authorities was deficient and was “nothing more than an exploratory search based upon suspicion that some unknown person or persons” committed a crime.
Hartmann also said that federal and tax return information is confidential and can’t be used in a criminal case. Buck said he is considering an appeal.
Fifty-four criminal cases are pending in Weld County, in addition to six that were filed through a grand jury. Some defendants have already pleaded guilty to charges of identity theft and criminal impersonation.
District attorney’s spokeswoman Jennifer Finch said those who have pleaded guilty can receive a four-year suspended prison sentence if they comply with deportation proceedings.
Immigrant advocates, like the Colorado Immigrant Rights Coalition, say the people charged are being punished for doing what the law requires them to do—pay taxes.
Regardless of legal status, people who earn income in the U.S. are required to pay taxes. Those who don’t have a Social Security number can get an Individual Taxpayer Identification Number, or ITIN, from the Internal Revenue Service to meet that requirement. Immigration attorneys have said that’s what the people who were arrested were doing.
Buck argues the defendants were breaking the law by being in the country illegally in the first place.
Francine Lipman, a law professor specializing in taxes at Chapman University in California, testified that it’s common for undocumented immigrants to use ITIN numbers to file taxes. She referenced former IRS Commissioner Mark Everson, who told Congress in 2006 that undocumented immigrants who used ITIN numbers reported almost $50 billion in tax liability from 1996 to 2003.
At the time, Everson told Congress that “the ITIN program is bringing taxpayers into the system.”
The ACLU said that by using ITIN numbers to file taxes, immigrants are helping clear any discrepancy in wages that turn up on Social Security numbers used to get jobs, and helping prevent the IRS from coming after people for back taxes.
